Guest Post: How to Harness the Power of Automation to Optimize Your Time

This week’s guest post is from the team at Integrated Technologies Australia:

As an entrepreneur, you
often have to wear many hats to succeed in business. One day you’re updating
the company blog and managing your social media pages, the next day you’re
responding to customer enquiries and calling back clients. Unfortunately, this
busy work can eat away time that could be better spent on growing your
business.

That’s where automation
comes in. By letting software automation tools take care of the medial tasks,
you can gain more time to focus on the core business activities that matter to
you.

Let’s take a closer
look at how you can harness the power of automation to
optimise your time:

Social
Media

If you have multiple
social media profiles, you need to keep each page active by regularly posting
new content, responding to customer enquiries, and letting your followers know
about upcoming events, sales and competitions. While these tasks are important,
they are also time-consuming.

Social media automation
tools let you manage all of your profiles from a single platform. They’re also
equipped with a range of powerful tools to save you time and increase the
output of your social media campaign. You can automatically schedule hundreds
of posts in advance, review in-depth analytics to find out what is and isn’t
working for your campaign, and filter through conversations by keyword,
hashtag, and location to find out what people are saying about your business.

Furthermore, you can
cross-post all of your content across multiple platforms such as Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Some software tools even recommend
the most ideal time to post your content.

Invoicing

Automating your
invoices can save you a lot of time on manual paperwork. And ensure you get
paid sooner too. Some of the most popular billing and invoicing software are
Invoicely, Zoho Invoice, Xero and Replicon. Regardless of which software you
choose, each one is highly customisable and jam-packed with features to make
your life easier.

With automated invoicing
software you can create professional, custom invoices from scratch. You can
also automatically schedule repeat invoices, track your time, monitor pending
invoices and be instantly notified when an invoice is paid. If you want to
invoice on the go, most software tools offer cross-compatibility between
desktop and mobile devices.

No matter how big or
small your business is, you can fine-tune every aspect of your invoicing to
suit your specific needs.

Wireless
Presentations

How many times have you
had a business presentation held up by technical problems? Your laptop won’t
connect to the projector, you brought the wrong cables, or you have no cables
at all. These issues are not only inconvenient they can cost your business in
lost sales and reputation.

The good news? These
days you can use a wireless presentation system to broadcast your presentation.
These products typically come as a single black box and let you use Wi-Fi to
wirelessly transmit data from your smartphone, laptop, tablet, or desktop
straight to your room’s screen.

Better still, you don’t
need any special software to do this, just the device itself and a solid Wi-Fi
connection. All you have to do is connect and present – it’s that simple. By
saving time on costly setup, you can present seamless and engaging
presentations without any disruptions.

If you want to discover
the benefits of a wireless presentation system for yourself, get in touch with
an automation expert who can assess your existing room and propose a custom
presentation solution for you.

Email
Marketing

Thought email was dead? Think again. According to WordStream email is the third most influence source of information for B2B audiences, while 73 percent of millennials identify email as their preferred means of communication.[i] So if you want to reach your audience faster and on a more frequent basis, automated emails are the way to go.

There are two ways you
can automate your emails. One way is to setup autoresponders that send an email
when a customer performs a certain action. For example, the system could send a
welcome email when a customer signs-up to your newsletter, or a customer
instantly receives an email after they buy a product from your website. The
other type of automated emails are those as part of a larger drip campaign.
These may be emails sent to new subscribers over a longer period of time in
order to introduce new products, promote sales and events, offer a free trial,
or share monthly newsletters and video content.

Better still, most
email automation tools have a simple drag-and-drop interface to let you
customise the look and feel of your emails. Platforms like BombBomb and Covideo
also let you record and upload high-quality video into your emails to help
boost CTRs.

Integrated Technologies Australia (ITA) are a Melbourne based Automation company. They take the latest technologies, untangle the complexity, and embed them straight into your home or business. Whether for entertainment, automation, energy management, or security, they do more than provide technological solutions, they enhance lifestyles.